Who should Scott Bessent really want to 'punch in the face'?

The Treasury Secretary went on a rampage against Trump's housing official. But Bessent, a gay man, should actually focus on Trump's choice for BLS commissioner, a raging homophobe. Don't expect it.

We learned two ugly things this week which illuminate more about the self-dealing, the ruthless competition and the bigotry among Donald Trump’s top officials.

Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, apparently raged against Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, at a members-only club in Georgetown, threatening several times—in front of most of Trump’s Cabinet—to “punch” Pulte “in the face.”

Meanwhile, A.J. Antoni, Trump’s choice for commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics—who Trump wants to install after firing the previous BLS commissioner because he didn’t like the dismal jobs report — was revealed by CNN to have engaged in grotesquely homophobic smears on social media in the past, in addition to other bigoted posts.

Let’s take these two things one at a time, and then we’ll connect them.

Bessent is a bumbling fool on television. He’s awkward, stilted, and he doesn’t jump into MAGA attack mode quickly enough to defend the indefensible. Instead, he tells lies in a slow, deliberate manner—unlike the more slick players in Trump world—which is less effective because the low information voter has more time to think and figure out it's not quite right.

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And Bessent slips out with some whoppers. A few weeks ago at a Breitbart event attended by major media, while discussing a Trump gimmick in the big, bad bill—tax-deferred investment accounts for all newborn American children—Bessent called it a “back-door to privatizing Social Security.”

What?!!! That’s, of course, been the Republican wet dream, going back to George W. Bush’s administration (and before). Bush attempted to do it and it soon contributed to the collapse of his presidency. It’s been the third rail for the GOP ever since—even though it’s among their secret goals.

Bessent’s comments set off alarm bells in the administration and likely had Trump fuming, since he’s squirmed in trying to claim he’s not touching Social Security when we know he’s intent on it, beginning with Elon Musk’s rummaging through the agency earlier this year.

As the media pounced, the White House had to clean up on aisle six, claiming the Trump administration is “wholeheartedly committed to protecting Social Security.” Bessent had to attempt to walk it back:

"Trump Baby Accounts are an additive benefit for future generations, which will supplement the sanctity of Social Security's guaranteed payments," Bessent wrote on X. "This is not an either-or question: our Administration is committed to protecting Social Security and to making sure seniors have more money."

I point to this situation just for background, to illustrate that Bessent is a failure when it comes to articulating the Trump economic policies (crazy as they are) and also, in this case, caused a fire that had to be put out.

I have no idea if that incident and Bessent’s general ineffectiveness had anything to do with the housing official Pulte allegedly bad-mouthing Bessent to Trump—just my speculation, but it’s a good hunch—but Bessent indeed claimed Pulte was trashing him to the president as he threatened to punch him in the face.

Pulte is the opposite of Bessent—aggressive MAGA tactics, swift social media skills and deviously slick one-liners on television. He’s the guy who called for Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve board member, to resign—in a post on X—after he claimed she allegedly engaged in mortgage fraud, which then prompted Trump to call for her firing.

Rather than take whatever info he had to the Department of Justice, which would look into it and announce what it determined, if they determined anything at all, he posted his call for her resignation on social media and then went right to MAGA-friendly TV outlets to push it. (A federal judge has ruled Trump did not have cause to fire Cook, who is still on the job.)

I’m sure Pulte does not like Bessent’s style, and, again, just speculation, but I’m sure he’d love to be Treasury Secretary. So it’s not implausible he was bad-mouthing Bessent to Trump. According to Politico, Bessent believed that, which led to the altercation:

A long table for the 30-some guests was set with top-of-the-line crystal and china. The guest list included Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Medicare and Medicaid chief Mehmet Oz, plus venture capitalist David Sacks, Palihapitiya’s partner on the “All In” podcast.

But amid the cocktail-hour din, Bessent lashed out at Pulte in an expletive-laden diatribe. The Treasury secretary had heard from several people that the Federal Housing Finance Agency director had been badmouthing him to Trump, a person close to him said. He wasn’t about to engage in chit-chat as if nothing was amiss.

“Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you,” Bessent told Pulte. “I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face.”

Bessent escalated it further when the owner of the place tried to break it up.

Pulte appeared stunned, and the tense encounter prompted club co-owner and financier Omeed Malik to intervene, according to the three people. But Bessent wasn’t having it — he sought to get him kicked out, the eyewitness said.

“It’s either me or him,” Bessent said to Malik. “You tell me who’s getting the fuck out of here.”

“Or,” he added, “we could go outside.”

“To do what?” asked Pulte. “To talk?”

“No,” Bessent replied. “I’m going to fucking beat your ass.”

They were then seated on opposite sides of the table, and the whole thing simmered down.

This is classic authoritarian regime stuff, in which the authoritarian is a narcissist who is very receptive to even the inkling of someone being harmful to the regime or, worse, disloyal, and then is open to any suggestion by someone among the backstabbers who want someone else axed for whatever reason. So all those around the dictator are cutthroat, competitors tearing one another down—to the point of physical altercations, or worse.

Now, then there’s other news we learned this week, about Antoni, Trump’s nominee from the right-wing Heritage Foundation for commissioner of BLS who won’t directly report to Bessent but will have to work with him, as Bessent relies on the BLS numbers as Treasury Secretary and has to sell them. According to CNN, “Trump’s pick to lead BLS ran Twitter account with sexually degrading, bigoted attacks”:

E.J. Antoni, a 37-year-old economist for the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, posted the comments from approximately 2017 through 2020 under a series of usernames and display names. CNN verified that all of Antoni’s posts came from the same Twitter account and that the posts from the anonymous aliases shared strikingly similar biographical details as Antoni.

In addition to a lot horrendously misogynistic, sexually degrading posts about women, including Vice President President Kamala Harris, Antoni engaged in homophobic rants:

In February 2020, Antoni declared: “Feminism is that belief by which women are liberated from false slavery to men in order to become true slaves to corporations.” And in another post, responding to a post to #TellMeALie, he wrote “attractive feminists exist.”

And in March 2020, he dismissed LGBTQ people’s existence, writing: “There is only one sexual orientation — everything else is a disorientation.”

Some of his other provocative posts were sexually graphic anti-gay taunts at CNN anchors Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper, both of whom are gay.

Now, you’d think that Scott Bessent, if he truly were a self-respecting gay man, would get his dander up about Antoni just like he did about Pulte, and want to punch him in the face. I’m not promoting violence, by the way, and do not believe anyone should be punching anyone else. Just saying that this should get Bessent even more angry.

Surely he’d go to Trump and say you can’t put in place this homophobe (who, by the way, also is a ideologue who has little experience and believes we shouldn’t even publish jobs numbers monthly). But no, that will not happen, because Bessent has sat by while Trump engaged in so many anti-LGBTQ actions.

As I wrote in a lengthy piece a few months ago, Bessent sold himself and his own community out for power, and couldn’t give a shit about LGBTQ people, even though he in the past talked about his support for a group that helps bring meals to people with AIDS. He now watches Trump killing people with AIDS, allowing to die by stopping drug treatments around the world via USAID.

Bessent is an immoral opportunist and MAGA supplicant who was ready to engage in violence against a a equally vile competitor to save his power, intent on doing what it takes to defend his seat at the table with Trump. But he couldn’t give a crap about the hate and violence perpetrated by Trump and the people surrounding Trump against gay men like himself.

The Treasury Secretary, as the principal economic advisor to the President, relies on the independent economic data provided by the BLS